


Antithesis

by Xparrot



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: A little angst, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Opposite Day, POV Carlos (Welcome to Night Vale), just another day in Night Vale, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2013-10-25
Packaged: 2017-12-30 11:41:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xparrot/pseuds/Xparrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Carlos woke up, everything was backwards. (Even Cecil.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Antithesis

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Naye, Gnine, and Joonscribble for the new-fandom support and canon-checking; and sincere apologies to any and all scientists, especially quantum physicists. I cry artistic license and that this is Night Vale.
> 
> Set around episodes 31-32, mild spoilers only.

When Carlos woke up, everything was backwards.

Since his alarm clock was digital and also unplugged, he didn't notice until he went to put on his clothes and discovered they were all inside out. At first he mistook this for an act of harmless japery, such as he had experienced for most of his school life. The scientists on the Night Vale project were generally above such juvenility, but everyone gets bored sometimes.

He was intrigued to find the prank extended to the point that the clothes could not in fact be turned rightside-out. No matter how many times he pulled the sleeves through the sweater, the seams and tags remained on the outside. Eventually he gave up and dressed in the ill-fitting ensemble. He was mentally composing congratulations of his colleagues' tailoring ability when he went to pour his coffee, and found that it would not leave the coffeepot.

Further inspection revealed that the coffee was now a dark frozen mass within the pot. Putting it back on the plate, after verifying it was plugged in and switched on, only served to freeze the coffee more solidly.

When Carlos opened the freezer, a cloud of steam billowed out. He shut the door on that blast of furnace heat and tried the refrigerator instead, which was pleasantly tropical in temperature if noxious in smell; the cream for the coffee had already turned. He rescued the wilting vegetables from the crisper and put them in the toaster oven on low; then, after fetching the oven mitts, made himself instant coffee with the water boiling in the ice-cube tray.

Not all scientific processes were affected. His car's engine still turned over—though the brake pedal accelerated, and the steering wheel was on the wrong side. Thanks to his time as a post-doc at Cambridge, Carlos adapted quickly; though the traffic was challenging, as not all Night Vale citizens were as versed in driving on the left. Also all the street signs were flipped around and facing the wrong direction, whichever way one drove.

Carlos spent the drive to the laboratory pondering why gravity was still observed. By all rights the town should be falling up into space. The car's digital clock was counting backwards, as was the fuel gauge; but in Night Vale the clocks aren't real anyway, and since the price of gas had been fixed in the early 1980s, the savings wouldn't be substantial.

By the sun rising in the west, it was a little past nine AM, so he was hardly surprised to turn on the radio and find Cecil's evening show airing. There was no immediate announcement of the day's unusual events, so presumably they were neither a government-sponsored program, nor a scheduled phenomenon. Carlos was relieved; he'd been concerned that Opposite Day might be a formal holiday in Night Vale, and his colleagues were barely recovered from the trauma of Arbor Day (Gerald was still suffering flashbacks, and Katya had only just come out from under her desk two days ago.)

But Cecil just covered such ordinary topics as the appropriate colors for the eye over the pyramid painted on everyone's lintels, and how Khoshekh the station cat had grown an extra tail (possibly the first stage of multi-cellular mitosis? He would have to ask the biologists). It took several minutes before Cecil mentioned, "An advisory: the scientists have called in to report illegal activity. Laws broken include Boyles's law, the law of thermodynamics, and the law of equal and opposite reactions.

"Mayor Pamela Winchell has issued an statement that the City Council may have repealed these laws, presumably for good reason. She asks for citizens not to panic until this repeal has been confirmed, after which panic up to the level of hand-wringing and quiet whimpers will be permitted between the hours of 6 and 10 PM, so as not to disrupt the workday," Cecil reported, sounding as reassuringly unconcerned as usual. 

"I myself haven't noticed anything atypical around this station," Cecil went on. "That being said, my first thought is, of course, that this is some ill-conceived experiment by that greasy-haired con-artist who calls himself a scientist, _Carlos_ , bane of our town—"

Carlos slammed on the gas, bringing the car to a screeching halt in the middle of the road. As this road was Canyon Drive, stopping was safer than steering off of it.

He stared out at the heat haze rising from the asphalt and the dust stirred by the leathery wings of the occasionally-visible canyon-dwelling creatures (either pterosaurs or a new species of mega vampire bat, according to the biologists) and listened to the radio. Cecil continued with vicious enthusiasm, "The snake-oil salesman has yet to confirm this, being, as can only be expected of such a feckless individual, late for his shift at the laboratory—"

Gravity, he had considered. It had not occurred to him to question Cecil. 

Out of morbid curiosity Carlos kept the radio on for the rest of the drive. Cecil had a few more unflattering things to say about his scientific methods and the shape of his nose, before moving on to Night Vale High's unsuccessful car wash and summoning ritual this morning. The hoses at the carwash had splattered the vehicles with mud, and the summoning ritual had ended up banishing two tenth-grade teachers (apparently the backwards chanting had been easier than usual to pronounce, though Cecil generously credited that to the teachers' educational efforts.)

At the lab, Carlos was greeted at the door by Dr. Zhang, the eldest and most serious of the team, blasting him in the face with a can of compressed air. The dignified biochemist giggled at Carlos's expression and scampered off to hide behind Ginevra the quantum physicist, who was hunched over the drafting table.

Ginevra possessed perhaps the highest IQ of anyone Carlos had ever met, so he was most interested in her insights into the current situation. Unfortunately Ginevra's current project was a page from a Spongebob coloring book. She had given up on completing the connect-the-dots picture and was carefully coloring a starfish with a blue wax pencil, tongue sticking out the side of her mouth as she concentrated. 

"Ah," Carlos said, stepping back from the drafting table to let Ginevra to continue her work undisturbed. She was mostly staying within the lines, at least. "So the phenomenon extends here as well?"

"Apparently," said Takashi, the robotics engineer. "Though not all of us are affected, it seems. But have you heard the guy on the radio?"

"Let's focus on the problem at hand, shall we?" Carlos said shortly.

Those of the team with unreversed faculties spent the morning experimenting, assessing what was altered and what was not. Thermodynamics were only altered in specific cases and mirrored around average human body temperature, so the necessary metabolic processes of life were at most a degree or two off. Electromagnetic radiation at first presented as normal, but on closer inspection acted like a wave when it should behave as a particle and as a particle when it ought to be a wave, which might or might not have explained the fetching shade of orange the sky had turned after sunrise-or-set.

Mathematics for the most part still functioned, though the imaginary square root of negative one was now quite real and trivial to prove. The normally unflappable mathematician Abdul was inconsolable, though Carlos couldn't tell if his sobbing was a personality inversion or just the normal reaction of a logician to Night Vale.

With all of reality to investigate, it would hardly be responsible of Carlos to dwell on specific instances. Besides, the lab had no working radio, the last one having been disassembled to jury-rig a psychokinetic energy meter. Usually Carlos played the community station's feed through his computer, but he had no spare time to login now. 

Or so he told himself. In truth it didn't help much. Whenever he paused from the research to stretch his spine or pick up a pencil, his thoughts inevitably drifted to what base canards Cecil might be relating about him.

It wasn't that Carlos was offended; nor had he ever cared overly much about his reputation, or he wouldn't have signed the non-disclosure agreements that had given him access to the town. But it felt oddly inappropriate to be researching Night Vale without the background murmur of Cecil's mellifluous voice.

A little while after Carlos had arrived in Night Vale, he had attempted to ascertain whether the community radio had an overall positive or negative impact on said community. He'd listened to every broadcast, drawn up comparative lists, investigated station management to the extent that was reasonably safe. Clearly the enigmatic and threatening forces which ruled Night Vale approved of Cecil's show, else it wouldn't be permitted to air; but whether Cecil was a puppet spokesman or an independent entity who happened to align with their interests, Carlos had been unable to determine. Nor had he been able to determine if that mattered.

It was unquestionable that Cecil's show, with its pronounced biases and emphatic and often misinformed instructions, was dangerous. But any media outlet was potentially dangerous. And the occasionally accurate warnings that he was able to convey to his many listeners—as far as Carlos had been able to tell, everyone in Night Vale tuned in to Cecil's show—was arguably vital to the majority's well-being. 

Carlos had concluded that the net gain of help outweighed the harm, and therefore it was ethical to use the program as a resource to gather and disseminate information. By then it was habit to tune into the radio whenever Cecil was on the air, regardless of the broadcast's relevance to his experiments. Until today Carlos hadn't realized how ingrained a habit it had become. He found himself losing his train of thought, listening for a voice which wasn't there. Strange, how an absence of sound could be as distracting as its presence.

He didn't consider the greater ramifications until lunchtime, when as usual he went down to Big Rico's. He ordered a chicken sandwich, and got a thick slice of multi-grain gluten-free bread wedged between two slabs of fried chicken. It was, objectively, the best sandwich he'd ever had at Big Rico's.

More perturbing was the way everyone paused when Carlos entered the pizzeria, conversation interrupted as heads swiveled towards him. There were a dozen people in Big Rico's, so at least thirty eyeballs fixed upon him, most of them in pairs. That attention, he was accustomed to—but not the townsfolks' expressions, bitter and unwelcoming. They stared at him in silence, then as one sniffed and turned away.

When he seated himself, no one smiled or haled him, or came over to his table to ask about his experiments or request an autograph. When he waved a greeting at Telly, the barber pulled a horrible face, as if he'd been spat at, and yanked the collar of his turtleneck sweater over his head.

Carlos ate his lunch even faster than usual, head ducked to avoid stray stares. As he chewed his hearty bread he tried to consider the problem itself rather than its effects, contemplate possible causes and potential solutions. But he couldn't come up with any testable hypothesis which would account for such random variations. And he felt keenly the isolation of his table, four plastic chairs and his the only one occupied: like being in junior high again. The tabletop's black-and-white linoleum seemed, with its rigidly tacky check, to be mocking his inability to discern even the simplest pattern.

When the radio's dissonant Hour of Hammers was replaced by the community station's noon update, Carlos could not help but listen. For a moment it helped—his heart gave a glad little skip to hear Cecil's familiar voice, familiarly reminding his listeners not to fish in the park duck pond as per the orders of sheriff's secret police, since the sheriff's secret police's alligator mascot got indigestion if it tried to ingest anything man-sized. (Children were allowed fishing permits on Wednesdays and Sundays, but only if they weighed under eighty pounds.)

It made Carlos feel part of the town again, to be nodding understanding of the rules along with the rest of the citizens in Big Rico's. Right until Cecil said, "Returning to our previous story, it appears that the mysterious reversals continue. Long-time friend of the show, Steve Carlsburg, called in to warn everyone not to light their fireplaces, as the smoke comes down the chimney instead of going up, and respiration isn't reversed, so smoke is still more difficult to breathe than air."

 _But how would it behave in vacuum?_ Carlos wondered, and was on the verge of devising a breakthrough experiment when he heard Cecil continue, "Steve also mentioned that he just saw Carlos, the despicable scientist himself, shirking his scientific duties to eat a sandwich in Big Rico's. Steve was unable to tell what kind of sandwich it was, though knowing Carlos, it probably contained illegal wheat or wheat byproducts. For shame, Big Rico's, serving such a man—"

Carlos looked up to see all thirty eyes in the pizzeria locked onto him. Some of the eyes' owners were recoiling from the last bite of sandwich in his hands, making defensive finger curses in its direction.

"Oh, come on!" Carlos cried, throwing the sandwich down on the tray. "I just bought this sandwich here! Where would I even _get_ wheat byproducts? Do you think I'm running an underground baguette smuggling ring?"

The biggest Rico of Big Rico's—who lived up to the name; his biceps were twice the diameter of Carlos's thigh—came out from behind the counter. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave," he said, leaving a pause at the end where a polite _sir_ was obviously omitted.

Carlos defiantly picked up the last of the wheat-less sandwich, stuffed it into his mouth even knowing it made his cheeks puff like a chipmunk's, and marched out of the pizzeria.

He was intending to go back up to the lab. His subconscious mind had another idea, however, because Carlos found his feet walking him down the street to the community radio station.

The building's layout hadn't changed, though he was surprised to find no eager, tragically mortal intern waiting outside the recording booth. Out fact-finding, Carlos assumed. At any rate, there was no one to bar his entrance once the red on-air light turned off, so he strode into Cecil's booth.

Cecil, hearing the door open, took off his headset and swiveled in his chair, saying, "Finally! It's about time you got in, Linus—"

Then he saw Carlos in the doorway, and stopped.

Not fact-finding after all, Carlos deduced; today's intern was a lazy slacker late to work. Or possibly just someone with keen survival instincts. The opposite of the intern norm, at any rate. Which today, of course, _was_ the norm...

He realized he was trying to distract himself. Better to contemplate interns, rather than how Cecil's face changed, looking at him—not the way it usually changed; not opening up and brightening, but closing down and darkening. An inverted smile bent Cecil's lips down; his eyes narrowed instead of widened. He rocked back in his chair instead of leaning forward.

All as to be expected, exactly what Carlos had expected. He just hadn't expected how much it would hurt to see it.

"Hello," Carlos said, then wondered whether today it would be more appropriate to begin with 'goodbye'.

Cecil didn't seem inclined to return the greeting either way. He just frowned at Carlos, arms folded across his chest, a barrier over his heart. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"I—I need to talk to you, Cecil," Carlos said. "About today. The events of today. Have you...noticed?"

"Noticed what? Noticed that boiling coffee is freezing cold instead of steaming hot, or that turning the lights on makes a room darker? I may not be a _scientist_ ," and his sneering tone made the word into a slur, "but I can notice that much."

"The coffee you can heat in a refrigerator, but the lights—that's fascinating, we haven't studied that," Carlos said. "But that's not what I meant. Have you noticed what's changed in, er, yourself?"

Cecil stiffened. "Not everyone's changed—other than the lights and coffee, nothing's different around the station."

"You're right that not everyone's changed, as far as we've been able to determine—I'm not affected myself—but the station definitely is," Carlos said. "Or at least _you_ are; perhaps it happened at your home—"

"How would you even know?" Cecil scoffed. "It's not like you look up from your falsified data long enough to even learn anyone's name—"

"Your name is Cecil," Carlos said, "I just used it."

"No you didn't."

"Yes I did—I said 'I need to talk to you, Cecil.'"

"No you didn't."

"Yes I did!—But never mind, that's beside the point."

"Which is?"

Carlos was distracted by the cocking of Cecil's eyebrows—how did he make that expression so haughty and judgmental? "Which is what?"

"What _is_ the point? Why are you wasting my time? You may not think anything I do here is as important as analyzing everything you deem wrong with our humble community—"

"What? I never said—I wouldn't—Cecil, don't you realize how wrong _this_ is? You, talking like this about _me_? You should—you're supposed to—you actually—you don't _hate_ me!"

Cecil's eyebrows went up even more haughtily and judgmentally. "I don't?"

"No! You l—you've never hated me! Not since I first came to Night Vale—don't you remember that? The first time you mentioned me on your show, you mistrusted my motives, perhaps, but you didn't have anything against me personally—"

"Of course not," Cecil said. "I didn't know you then; how could I loathe someone I'd never met?"

"Quite readily, to tell by past performance—but not me; you don't _loathe_ me!"

"And why do you believe that?"

"Because you never discredit my science or insult my personage on your show, not before today. On the contrary, you—ah..." Stymied how to say, _effusively express adoration for every element of my person_ , Carlos settled on, "You've worked with me on past projects without any sign of distaste."

Cecil's lips pursed like he was sucking on a lemon, or perhaps a salty pretzel given the current physics. "Perhaps you mistook my journalistic professionalism for congeniality."

"Cecil, we're going out!"

Cecil barked a harsh, unkind laugh. "Whatever gave you that idea?"

"Oh, I don't know, perhaps the show that you dedicated almost entirely to our first date? Doesn't this station archive past shows? Just listen to them—"

"Much as I would love to prove you wrong, I have a show—a present show, not some past imaginary show—which goes on the air in," Cecil made a show of checking his watch, "ten minutes."

"Your watch!" Carlos exclaimed.

Cecil made a commendable effort to recoil from his own wrist. "What about it?"

"I gave it to you, don't you remember? For our one-month anniversary."

"Only you would be so cheap as to offer an ordinary watch for an anniversary gift."

"It's not ordinary—or, rather it is, except for here, where it's extraordinary—but look on the back."

With spitefully slow and exaggerated motions, Cecil took off the watch and turned it over. "It's engraved," he said, and read, "'From C, to C'."

"See?" Carlos said. "From Carlos, to Cecil."

"Or from Celeste, to Cabot; or from Cain, to Christian—it was probably already engraved when you lifted it from the pawn shop."

"It wasn't, and I didn't lift it—no pawn shop in Night Vale has working watches anyway—and even if it was, why would I be giving you a watch, if we have no relationship to speak of?"

"Perhaps you were trying to buy my affections," Cecil said. "Perhaps it was some pointless experiment of yours. I don't know, do I look like a quack scientist? But I'm sure you had an ulterior motive for forcing it upon me."

"I did," Carlos said, "I wanted to make sure your show aired at the correct times, so I wouldn't miss it."

"And now as it happens, it's nearly such a time. So if you could remove yourself," and Cecil waved him toward the door with the distasteful wafting motion one makes to dispel a noxious odor.

"Just think about it," Carlos said desperately. "Doesn't any of this sound familiar to you? Have you really forgotten everything you've ever said about me before?"

"I seriously doubt it was anything worth remembering," Cecil said.

"Then what about the rest? What about Steve Carlsburg?"

"What about Steve?"

"'Long-time friend of the show'? You hate Steve! He's anti-government conspiracy!"

"Why should I hate Steve for holding a few unorthodox views?"

"What do you think about Telly?"

"Nothing in particular; he's a fine barber." Cecil's eyes drifted toward Carlos's hairline and his lip curled. "He made a good go at fixing that greasy rats-nest of yours, though time overcame his efforts, I see."

"Do you support Hiram McDaniels for mayor?"

"Even if he weren't a convicted criminal, isn't it self-evident that dragons have no place in modern politics?"

"And what you think of Desert Bluffs?"

"While I've only briefly had the pleasure of visiting our sister hamlet, from all I've heard Desert Bluffs is a delightful place to live, and our friendly rivalry with them is..." Cecil trailed off, his mouth twisting like he'd gotten a sardine on a sundae instead of a maraschino cherry. "...Okay, I admit, that did not sound...right."

"Yes—yes! You see?!"

"Just because I'm slightly backwards about Desert Bluffs doesn't prove anything," Cecil said.

"But you have to admit the possibility! If your mindset's polarity has been reversed on that, might it not be changed on other topics as well?"

"Such as you?" Cecil narrowed highly skeptical eyes in Carlos's direction. "With Steve Carlsburg or Hiram McDaniels, maybe my mind's been changed. But I find it very difficult to believe that I've ever thought any better of _you_. I don't approve of or even _like_ science, and I still find you lower the reputation of the entire discipline."

"But don't you see, that makes perfect sense!" Carlos said. "The intensity of your feelings isn't reversed, only their nature—the more polarized they were in one direction, now they are in the other. So you hate me so now because of how much you..." He stopped, tongue-tied by realization.

If Cecil narrowed his eyes any more they would be closed. "Are you _blushing_?"

"What? No, I don't—"

"It's especially unattractive, with your complexion," Cecil said. "Besides, even if, by some astronomical chance, you're actually right for once in your career—what do you expect me to do about it? I have a show to do, and this day of opposites is hardly _my_ fault." His tone made it clear whose fault he still believed it to be.

"I—I thought—" Carlos stammered, "I thought we could...work together, to figure out what happened? And find some way to reverse it?"

"Reverse the reversal?"

"There has to be a way. And it would help if I had the town's cooperation, so if you could refrain from further besmirching me..."

Cecil rolled his eyes. "Of course, that's your real concern! I won't lie to my listeners just to soothe your pitiful ego."

"I'm not asking you to lie, just...you don't have to mention me at all?" Carlos was struck by deja vu; they had had this conversation before, not so very long ago, though the concerns behind it had been entirely different.

Cecil looked far less accommodating now; but he said grudgingly, "Until I get the proof that you're behind this, I won't bring it up again. But as soon as I have that evidence—"

"Yes, yes, that's fine. Thank you, Cecil."

Cecil shuddered. "I do wish you'd stop saying my name. It sounds so...repulsive, in your voice."

Carlos blinked. "Ah, er, sorry, Ce—sorry. I won't again. But thank you." He hesitated under Cecil's impatient glare, at last said, "I suppose I should get back to my experiments, and you have your show—I'll let you know if I learn anything more."

He turned toward the booth's door, stopped when Cecil behind him said, "Carlos?"

For a single wretched millisecond, Carlos hoped—but when he looked back Cecil's face was twisted into a grimace of aversion, as if just pronouncing his name was an ordeal. There was something malicious in his eyes, a malice Carlos had seen before, but never directed toward him. "Has it occurred to you," Cecil asked, "if I'm affected and don't realize it, that maybe you're also affected? You're so sure _my_ feelings about _you_ are reversed—are you sure your own aren't reversed as well? Because while I may actually remember a few occasions we were forced to work together, and even one or two of those torturous dinners you seem to believe were dates...I don't recall you visiting me at the station in such a state of agitation before today. And I don't recall you ever asking me how I felt about you."

Carlos frowned at him. "Because you made it so clear—I never needed to ask."

"Maybe," Cecil said, staring at him with the cold detachment of a biologist examining a specimen jar. "Or maybe you just never cared about the answer, before today?"

 

* * *

 

The science team had a dozen ongoing experiments which required daily afternoon checks, in addition to the fifteen set up this morning to test the day's phenomenon.

So naturally Carlos's first question upon returning to the lab was, "You knew Cecil and I were going out, didn't you?"

Takashi the robotics engineer frowned at him perplexedly. "Cecil?—Oh, you mean the guy on the radio? Yeah, you've gone out with him a few times..."

Carlos's relieved sigh was interrupted by Takashi snapping his fingers. "—Hold on, do you mean _'going out'_ going out? Not just you buying him dinner for an excuse to interrogate him but, like, he's your boyfriend?"

"...Yes?"

"Really? Wow, I had no idea."

Carlos's rising heart crashed like the phantom Titanic which had pulled into Night Vale's waterless waterfront last month and rammed into an iceberg-shaped boulder. "I'm sure I must have mentioned it before..."

"Not that I can recall—I mean, the guy on the radio might've said something about it, but I assumed he was exaggerating—he's not exactly an accurate observer, you know? I figured you were pumping him for information about the town, and he assumed that you were talking to him because you liked him...so you were actually, uh, pumping him for something else? ...Hey, are you blushing?"

"I don't blush!"

Takashi jumped. "No, right, I didn't think so...but you're really going out with the guy on the radio?"

"Yes," Carlos said. "For the last couple of months."

"Huh. Uh, congratulations? Or...condolences...? Did you really want a date out of him, or just data?"

"No! Or, yes, or—I want to be dating him! We're in—er—yes!" Takashi's surprised look made the sunken shipwreck of Carlos's heart drop into a metaphorical Marianas Trench. "I've really never said anything about us to you?"

Takashi scratched his head, thinking. "Not that I can remember? Though this is the first time we've ever talked about anything personal, that I can think of. Usually it's all science all the time. Which is cool, it's what we're here to do, right? But yeah, I kind of thought you were one of those guys who didn't have a social life. Except what the guy on the radio was making up about you."

It was a small and waterlogged life preserver, but Carlos still grabbed onto it. "So Cecil does talk about me? In more complimentary terms than he has today?"

"Oh yeah, definitely. All the time! I don't think he actually knows the names of any of us scientists except for you. —Which, given the provable risks of repeating any word too many times in this town, isn't something I particularly mind—but yeah, you're his favorite, for sure."

Carlos felt his cheeks warm again, even as an unavoidable smiled creased them. "Good."

"If you say so," Takashi said dubiously. "So, about the investigation into opposite day...?"

"Right, yes!" Carlos said. "I wanted to confirm—not everyone is affected by it, correct? At least so far as we've observed."

"Actually," Takashi said, "looking into it further, there does seem to be some fundamental personality alteration in every person we've surveyed—though most of them aren't consciously aware of the changes?"

"There is? But what about you—you're no different, are you?"

"As it turns out..." Takashi coughed. "Apparently, I usually have a reputation of being something of a ladies' man?"

Carlos looked at him blankly. "You do?"

"I know, weird, right? I mean, okay, if I really think about it hard, I can remember getting a little intimate with a couple of the women around here. A few dozen times. In the last month. But that's totally not what I'm into now."

"So what are you into?"

Takashi's smile was slow and smooth and quite unexpected. "To tell the truth, today I really get what the guy on the radio's on about. So this thing you've got going with him—is it monogamous?"

"Er, yes," Carlos said. "Yes it is."

"Well, it was worth asking." Takashi's eyes drifted up to the top of Carlos's head, rather dreamily. "Your hair really is perfect...any chance I could touch it? Just once?"

"I have some science to do," Carlos said. "Over there," and he promptly went over there, before he was forced to schedule yet another HR-mandated seminar on sexual harassment under the influence of preternatural phenomena.

Carlos absolutely intended to work. He collected a gratifyingly tall stack of print-outs from the functional members of the team, and sat down with three mechanical pencils, a calculator, and a pad of graph paper, ready to do some really good solid science.

Hours passed before a tap on his shoulder startled him out of his concentration. The neuropsychologist Katya leaned over to point at the graph paper under his pencil. "Who's that?"

"Who?" Carlos focused on the pad. He'd written all of three variables and half of an equation. The rest of the page was filled with a reasonably recognizable portrait of Cecil. From the waist up. With his tie undone and his shirt unbuttoned.

"Um," Carlos said. "That's. Um. Cecil."

"Oh, the guy on the radio?" Katya said. "That's a good likeness—well, I've never seen him before, so I don't know if it really looks anything like him. But it's a good picture of a man—better than anything I can draw, since I'm pretty much limited to stick figures, and they don't have faces at all, unless you put dots for eyes and a line for a mouth, but with such simple iconography you can hardly portray any nuance of expression, while as the man you drew there is smiling but there's a sense of melancholy in his eyes, or maybe uncertainty—"

Carlos stared at her. It was the most words he had ever heard out of Katya. In total. For their first half a year in Night Vale he had thought she was mute. "Er, Katya? Can I help you with something?"

"Oh, I was wondering if I could help you! And I have some new research data pertaining to today's events—but I was worried about you, Carlos, you've been working so hard on this picture and you looked so quiet and sad, not like you at all—well, you're pretty quiet, you don't tend to talk unless you have something to say; but you don't usually look that sad—or that happy, or much of any particular emotion, except excited and nervous when we make discoveries—but today has been unsettling for most of us, and talking always helps. And since I'm the closest thing we have to a psychologist around here it makes sense that you can talk to me, or listen to me if you're more comfortable with that, whichever; I've just found myself that it can be helpful to open your mouth and say whatever's on your mind—"

"Katya? Katya. Katya!" Carlos finally succeeded in wedging a large enough pause in the flood of words to introduce a few of his own. "What's this data you've found?"

"I haven't been able to confirm it yet; there's so much variation in effects that it's difficult to duplicate results, and of course the very existence of personality is a hotly contested debate in the field of psychology that I don't have the expertise to speak to, as it's only tangentially related to the biological structure of the brain—but I've been talking with the other scientists—or talking to them, everyone's unusually quiet today, which is the one consistent effect I have noticed, but that might be due to my own character inversion since apparently I'm slightly more prolix than is the norm—"

"Never mind confirmation—what have you found? Do you know what's causing the reversal?"

"No, we still have no ideas there. The effect apparently occurred across all of Night Vale simultaneously, so we can't localize its source. But there does appear to be limits. For instance, only a single axis is reversed in any given case. So, with people, the inversion of personality is only in regards to one key aspect. A slob is now a neat-freak or a person who loves sweet things now hates them; but a neat-freak with a sweet tooth will either be a slob or dislike chocolate, not both.

"Also, all the reversions are on the macro scale—even if there are changes on a microscopic level, their effects are all clearly observable, like the revised thermodynamics. Small-scale processes that can't be measured without instrumentation are all completely normal. We tried to ask Ginevra if it could be an aspect of quantum indeterminacy, but she just wanted an ice cream cone and more crayons."

"Interesting," Carlos said, more because it was something he thought he should say than because he was actually interested. He thought it _should_ be interesting, assuaging his abstract scientific curiosity. But he couldn't see how such data could help him figure out the root cause of the day's events, or stop them. "Even if we can't locate its origin, have we had any luck canceling the effect in a localized area? How'd the gamma radiation test go?"

"Not great. Actually, boss, I've been talking with Takashi and Abdul and the others who can still communicate clearly, and we're wondering...if we do find what's causing this, should we try to undo it? I mean, it's not our job to correct it. We're here to observe and record, not to interfere with the phenomenon we're investigating. We're scientists—if we wanted to fix things we'd have become engineers or surgeons or firefighters.

"And even if we can restore the natural order, would that really be a good idea? When I was interviewing people today, a bunch of them were surprised by what was happening—Night Vale citizens! Actually surprised by a weird event! Maybe eventually they'd learn how to fear the more lethal occurrences! And one of my subjects was a pleasant woman who turned out to be a librarian—a Night Vale librarian, outside the library, and not trying to bite anybody at all, can you imagine?"

Carlos tried not to flinch, though after over a year here it was difficult to control the instinctive terror of the word 'librarian.' "What are you saying?"

"That this might be the best thing to happen to this town! Unfortunate for a few, like Ginevra—but the effects appear limited to the town borders, and if the people negatively affected leave, they might revert back. But for the citizens who've grown up here, becoming their polar opposites might be a boon. I've never seen the mayor be so competent. Even your friend Cecil on the radio, did you hear how he wasn't trying to incite anyone to lynch that poor Steve Carlsburg? Given Night Vale's usual standards, if everything here is turned backwards, most of the town will actually be going forwards for once....Carlos? Where are you going?"

"Out," Carlos said. "I...need to think."

Which was a complete lie; what he needed was not to think. Maybe lying was the inversion in his own self—it certainly didn't feel natural, twisting his belly in knots as he clattered down the stairs from the lab, out into the street. The breeze outside was implausibly moist and hot enough to raise a prickling sweat on his neck. As the afternoon faded into evening, the humid desert air was warming up; by twilight it would be as muggy as noon should have been.

The few pedestrians out in the heat gave Carlos dirty looks. At the end of the block, a toddler of no more than three struggled to push a stroller, filled with the awkwardly folded form of his bawling mother. Even in Night Vale they were an odd sight, but none of it was sufficiently distracting.

Hard as Carlos tried, he couldn't stop considering how normal Cecil had sounded today. How rational and practical—excepting his opinion of Carlos; but was it really so unreasonable to mistrust a scientist, in a place where science itself was more art than, well, science? When Carlos and his team had first arrived in Night Vale, the citizens had been suspicious, as one would assume subjects to be of their observers. Carlos's popularity—thanks mostly to Cecil's unwarranted esteem—had been the strange thing, one more atypical variable in the conundrum that was Night Vale.

If Night Vale's uniqueness were reversed to the boring orthodox, then wasn't it only to be expected that Carlos's bizarre prestige also be lost? No town should have an ordinary scientist as its hero. Nor should any scientist be praised more for his appearance than his intelligence. Cecil's inexplicable admiration for Carlo's quite conventional looks, and all the affection that admiration inspired, was just another artifact of the town's weirdness; Carlos had always realized this. Losing it was a predictable consequence of normality. It was only logical.

Logic, Carlos thought, really shouldn't hurt this much.

A man bumped Carlos's shoulder in passing, muttered "'scuse me," and kept hurrying down the street. The courtesy was atypical enough today that Carlos turned to see who it was. The man was wearing a white lab coat, but wasn't any scientist on Carlos's team. His curly hair was vaguely familiar—a doctor from the Night Vale hospital, a surgeon, as Carlos recalled.

The doctor was heading toward the toddler and his mother in the stroller—to help them, Carlos assumed, and then his assumption flipped over. If the Hippocratic Oath were reversed, if "do no harm" became—

Carlos had already broken into a sprint by the time he saw the flash of silver—a scalpel clutched in the surgeon's gloved hand, raised above mother and child as his mouth gaped in a hideous, gleeful grin.

Before the blade could fall, Carlos charged at the man. He had no experience in fighting to speak of, but they were of a similar size; he knocked both the surgeon and himself sprawling to the sidewalk. The scalpel went flying. The toddler shrieked in terror and fled, faster than one would expect his chubby legs to be able to pump, shoving his mother's stroller along in front of him.

The surgeon screamed in furious denial and flung himself at Carlos, flailing and punching. Carlos tried to block but missed; a blue-latex-clad fist clipped his jaw, slamming him back into the building behind him. His head hit the brick wall, and apparently pleasure wasn't in fact the opposite of pain, because the blow _hurt_ , setting Carlos's skull ringing like a tolled bell. He slumped to the pavement, dizzy and stunned, as the surgeon retrieved his scalpel and loomed over him, posed to perform an impromptu appendectomy.

It was a deeply ironic way to die, Carlos realized dazedly, especially as he'd already had his appendix out when he was fifteen. He ought to get out from under the scalpel, but he couldn't focus his eyes enough to see which way was up—

Then there was a confusing flurry of sound and motion over him—another shout, another meaty thud of fist against flesh. The surgeon screamed again. Carlos blinked hard, forced his doubled vision back to the singular in time to see the white-coated doctor lope off down the street.

"Yes, run back to your damnable hospital, Dr. Steinman!" Cecil hollered after him, shaking his fist; then shook out his fist, flexing bruised knuckles.

"C-Cecil?" Carlos asked, squinting up at his unexpected savior.

Cecil glared down at him, folding his arms over his chest. "I told you to stop saying my name."

"Ah—sorry. But thank you for—"

"Dr. Steinman removed my tonsils; I've always resented him for that," Cecil said. "Though I wouldn't have taken the excuse to pop him if I'd realized whose worthless hide I'd be saving."

"Right. Sorry." Carlos's head was still throbbing; gingerly he reached back, prodded the swelling bump. When he got home he should microwave a bag of peas to ice it.

Cecil eyed the few drops of blood spotting Carlos's fingers distastefully. "Don't ask me to bring you to the hospital."

"I won't," Carlos said. "Today that's probably the most dangerous place to be anyway." Hopefully a lack of blood didn't at present indicate severe injury. The pounding was subsiding, though when he pushed himself to his feet he was overtaken with dizziness, had to brace himself against the brick wall.

Cecil watched him, making no move to help. Though not, oddly, taking the opportunity to leave, either. Carlos looked at him curiously. "Don't you have a show?"

"Dinner break," Cecil said. "Or is that breakfast break? Meals have been pretty confusing." He flexed his bruised fingers again.

"I'm so sorry," Carlos said. "For everything that's happened today."

"I knew it! I knew this was all your fault!"

"No! I didn't cause it, I swear," Carlos said. "But I think that usually, I'd be able to solve it somehow—figure out how to fix it. You're right about me, today. I'm a fraud. I'm the opposite of a scientist, whatever the opposite of a scientist is. Not intelligence or knowledge—but objectivity, perhaps? Or detachment, or rationality, or whatever it is that allows someone to focus on minutia and patiently gather data until there's enough to form a testable hypothesis—to find satisfaction in finding knowledge, and accept reality for what it is, no matter the personal impact of the truth..."

"Yes, yes, so you're a terrible scientist," Cecil said. "Tell me something I didn't already know."

Maybe it was the pain in his head or maybe it was his inverted objectivity, that Carlos's irritation flared before he could contain it. "How could you even tell? You know hardly a thing about science!"

"I know enough to know when someone's bad at it," Cecil shot back. "And that's all I need—science is a useless practice. Your hypotheses are just made-up stories that don't make sense."

"I've told you before, they make sense anywhere that isn't here! And they're not flights of imagination; they're verifiable, and can be disproven—outside of Night Vale's borders, at least, and if you had any idea how _frustrating_ that gets—"

Cecil rolled his eyes so excessively that they risked popping out of their sockets. "And I'm supposed to be _dating_ you? Or in your delusions am I usually a scientist, too?"

"No, you're not—that has nothing to do with us. ...Actually, I maybe haven't mentioned it to you before, but I rather like it, that we don't always talk shop, since you're not a scientist and I'm not a radio host. And you certainly don't like me for my mind—my head, maybe; but mostly for the hair on it," and he patted that tangle, feeling suddenly self-conscious and vulnerable at the disparaging curl of Cecil's lip. If only he were still scientist enough to fix this—to change Cecil at least, so that he would look at Carlos the way he was supposed to. Or rather, not supposed to; but the way he did anyway, as ridiculous and unreasonable as it was...

"It's hard to conceive that anyone could see anything to appreciate in that oily mess," Cecil said, nose wrinkling in distaste as he stared at the top of Carlos's head.

Carlos let go a breath shaky enough to pass for a chuckle. "Yes, I imagine it's what you most hate about me, right now."

Cecil's censorious gaze dropped to sneer at Carlos in the face. "Hardly. Yes, your countenance is singularly repulsive; but if anything that's the least of your faults."

Carlos blinked. "...It is? Then..."

"—Mm! Mmmm-mmm!"

Carlos didn't recognize the unintelligible mumble hailing him. Nor could he identify the owner of the mumble, camouflaged as it was in the voluminous, hooded robes of the City Council. Cecil went still beside Carlos as the bizarrely singular figure approached, waving at them with a floppy sleeve that hid all shape of the limb beneath it.

As the council member neared, it reached the sleeve up into the darkness under its hood. There was a wrenching, tearing sound, and the sleeve lowered from the concealed face, with a long silvery strip dangling from it, trailing a string of spittle.

On closer inspection, Carlos realized that strip wasn't a piece of torn hide, but rather a length of gray duct tape.

"I've been looking for you," the council member said. When not speaking in unison with its fellows, it had a surprisingly chipper alto. 

"Me?" Cecil asked, his voice not quite cracking. Apparently respect and stark terror weren't opposites; or maybe he just felt both in equal measures, so swapping the variables changed nothing.

"You, or you," the council member said, flopping its sleeve and the length of duct tape at Carlos. "Either or both. You see, a little bird—that's what we call the sheriff's secret police helicopters—told me that you've been looking into the cause of today's events. And usually I wouldn't tell you anything about it, but today I really felt like explaining! It's not the scientists' fault, I'm afraid, Cecil; it's all us. The City Council, that is. I'd be happy to give you the juicy details, but the short version is that we were trying out a new spell—"

"A spell?" Carlos repeated incredulously; just because he wasn't a scientist today didn't mean he had to believe in magic.

"Yes—you don't think you scientists are the only ones who experiment here, do you?" A terrible high-pitched juddering noise issued from the council member's hood. It might have been a giggle. "We've cast so many spells—but this one was quite fascinating! We really thought it had potential. And it worked—after a fashion, to the letter of the curse, which really you would think we would expect by now. Up is down, top is bottom—"

Carlos started in recognition. "—And charm is strange?"

"Exactly!" The council member clapped its sleeves together. Carlos had the impression the darkness under the hood was beaming at him. "Though really, isn't charm always strange? And the strange can be charming..."

"So quarks are reversed—are you saying we're all _antimatter_?"

"Oh-ho, you are a clever one, aren't you! We should never have manipulated you into coming; at this rate you'll fulfill the prophecy after all—"

"The prophecy—?"

"—But you're absolutely correct, of course we're all anti-matter. We're anti-everything today, haven't you noticed?"

"That's not even remotely how antimatter works!"

"But haven't you already realized it's on a quantum level?" asked the council member cheerfully. "The observer's paradox is a truth instead of a dilemma today; the spell only changed that which is noticed, that which matters enough to be worth noticing.—Though that wasn't enough for our purposes, since it turns out the opposite of death isn't life after all, but something so much worse—"

On another day Carlos might've been fascinated by the answers being offered here. Now he was too impatient to wait for the one he most wanted. "But what can we do about it? How do we change it back, break this spell of yours?"

"Oh, that's simple enough! You don't have to do anything at all," the council member said. "It was only a test, as I told you. It's due to end, as so many curses do, with the break of dawn. Which is to say, just a little while from now," and it waved its sleeve at the eastern horizon, where the aquamarine sun was sinking in the yellow-tinted sky.

Carlos squinted into that contradictory light. "So when the sun sets—rises—everything reversed will change back to its original state?"

"Precisely! So clever," the council member bubbled. "Now, before then—oh, I'd love to stay and chat more, this is so freeing! But I think I shall go and lock myself in the nearest convenient bathroom instead, before I blurt out any old mortal secret, as you're both such nice young men, and there is a very long list of things I could tell you that would see your very existence annihilated. For instance, the Tiered Heavens are—"

"Oh, look, the barbershop," Cecil said, pointing at Telly's across the street. "They have a lovely bathroom—have a good evening, sir-or-madam," and he waved meaningfully. The city council member, nodding, returned the duct tape to the space under its hood, mumbled an unintelligible farewell, and jaywalked to the barbershop.

"I should have asked more questions," Carlos said. "That was a rare opportunity..."

"Of course _you'd_ take advantage of someone under a curse."

"Under a curse that they themselves cast," Carlos said, ignoring for the moment the impossibility of actual curses. Relief was making him lightheaded, or perhaps it was the concussion. "But go ahead, Cecil, tell me how much you hate me. You have," he glanced at the setting sunrise, "about five minutes left?"

"That's hardly enough time to catalog all your flaws," Cecil said. "It's far more than the general hideousness of your aspect. You're one of the most cowardly men I've ever had the misfortune to meet, and the least intelligent. Like the way you charged that stupid doctor, just to save some idiotic child—it was appalling. I find your so-called science ethically dubious and more tedious than anything I've ever learned; and you yourself are, in all ways, a reprehensible human being who I am ashamed to know. In short, I detest you."

Carlos felt a hot prickling in the corners of his eyes. For all Cecil had said before—had said to the entire town on the radio—to be told this face-to-face, so plainly, with such certainty... "Is that truly how you feel, Cecil?"

"It is," Cecil said belligerently.

"I didn't realize..." Carlos swallowed, turned away to hastily rub his eyes. "Thank you."

" _Thank_ me?"

"I won't forget this. I just hope you aren't too embarrassed by it, later..."

Cecil was staring at him in earnest. "I'm beginning to suspect you're also insane."

"Maybe so." Carlos cleared his throat, straightened to look Cecil in the eye. "You should know, for the record, that I...that I feel the same way. Even if I'm not usually prone to admitting it."

"You don't know what you really feel," Cecil said. "You're as backwards as the rest of us."

"For the next few minutes, yes—but I don't believe the nature of my feelings is altered. Merely how much I let myself dwell upon them, when I have so much else to do—but they're always there."

"Or you're just fooling yourself now." Cecil's eyes were bright and cruel and for a moment Carlos missed him so fiercely that it felt like a knife in his chest, hurting worse than his aching skull. "Maybe you're feeling something so strongly now, because usually there's nothing there at all. Just you using me, for the sake of the science that's the only thing you truly love. You don't know what the reality actually is."

Carlos's heart thumped against his ribs. The air was sweltering, sweat slipping under the collar of his lab coat. "I don't know for sure," he admitted. "But we'll find out, soon enough."

"I should stop wasting time with the likes of you," Cecil said. "I have a show to finish."

"How would you end it? 'Good morning, Night Vale, good morning'?"

Cecil gave him such a lividly poisonous look that Carlos laughed before he could help it, giddy with knowing that Cecil wouldn't look at him like this again. "Stay, Cecil. Scientist or not, you want to know how it really is as much as I do."

Cecil didn't reply, but unwillingly turned his face eastward. Carlos turned with him, to watch as the indigo sun dipped to kiss the earth, and then was drawn down, sucked into the horizon's greedy dark mouth.

Wind whistled as the temperature plummeted, the desert twilight suddenly properly cool. Carlos shivered in it.

A hand touched his own, fingers familiarly interlacing with his, gripping tight. A warm hand, but trembling a little, as if fearful to let go.

"Carlos?" asked Cecil beside him. His voice was also trembling a little. "Do you—are you—"

"Yes, Cecil," Carlos said.


End file.
